Gentrification and Food

 

In answering my essential question, how does food impact a culture within my family and society, I have focused a lot on my own family. Recently, I have shifted the focus onto society and was interested in which the role goes gentrification impacts food and its culture. For this, I focused my research specifically on Latino culture and food. In Feeding or Starving Gentrification: The role of Food Policy writer Nevin Cohen highlights what is means for food to be gentrified. She writes that “Food plays a significant role in gentrification. “Foodie” culture often serves as gentrification’s leading edge by signifying that a community is ripe for investment.”

 

Through learning the culture around the gentrification of food. I wanted to see how it could be applied in my everyday life. As I began to think about it I noticed how often I see but also play into the gentrification of food. Now in saying this I have to keep in mind the importance in the modernization of food but there is also a negative side effect. For example, living on the Upper East side, the Latino restaurants I see are all extremely modernized weather they serve the food omakaze style, or a regular arepa is begging made with “hand-picked artisanal spices” I see the gentrification in many Latin-American food places.

 

As the Latino community is a minority there is a good side to gentrifying the food but at the same time we struggle with a larger problem. A judgmental and discriminatory society. By only highlighting the gentrified food places, the other, more authentic Latin-American restaurants are automatically labeled as dirty, or slow.